CHAPTER VI
TRAGEDY: LODGE, KYD, MARLOWE, _Arden of Feversham_ 193

APPENDIX
THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE 270

INDEX 277




CHAPTER I

EARLY CHURCH DRAMA ON THE CONTINENT


The old Classical Drama of Greece and Rome died, surfeited with horror
and uncleanness. Centuries rolled by, and then, when the Old Drama was
no more remembered save by the scholarly few, there was born into the
world the New Drama. By a curious circumstance its nurse was the same
Christian Church that had thrust its predecessor into the grave.

A man may dig his spade haphazard into the earth and by that act
liberate a small stream which shall become a mighty river. Not less
casual perhaps, certainly not less momentous in its consequences, was
the first attempt, by some enterprising ecclesiastic, to enliven the
hardly understood Latin service of the Church. Who the innovator was is
unrecorded. The form of his innovation, however, may be guessed from
this, that even in the fifth century human tableaux had a place in the